Tag Archives | Ethics

Last month, The Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI), an organization committed to spreading “a progressive and vibrant intellectual culture in the UK,” launched IAI Academy — a new online educational platform that features free courses in everything from theoretical physics to the future of feminism. Get up to speed with what physicists do and don’t know with CERN physicist John Ellis’ ‘A Brief Guide to Everything’ or discover the meaning of life with sociologist Steve Fuller.

In a darkened lab in the North of England, a research associate is intensely focused on the microscope in front of her. She carefully maneuvers a long glass tube that she uses to manipulate early human embryos.

“It’s like microsurgery,” says Laura Irving of Newcastle University.

Irving is part of a team of scientists trying to replace defective DNA with healthy DNA. They hope this procedure could one day help women who are carrying genetic disorders have healthy children.

“We are talking about conditions for which there is currently no cure,” says Dr. Doug Turnbull, a professor of neurology at Newcastle University who is leading the research. These mitochondrial diseases are caused by hereditary defects in human cells.

“Mitochondria are like little power stations present in all our cells,” Turnbull says. These power stations provide the energy that cells need. If the mitochondrial DNA is defective, the cells don’t work right.

Andrew O’Hehir has a nuanced view of ethics in journalism, reflected here in this essay for Salon:

In thinking about the cases of Gary Webb and James Risen, two famous investigative reporters aggressively persecuted for their explosive revelations (in very different situations, and with different results), we are drawn into the thorny question of journalism and its so-called professional ethics. How well do the supposed codes of journalism work, and whom do they serve and protect? Is the primary role of journalism as a social institution to discover the truth as best it can and raise the level of public discourse, or to preserve its own power and prestige and privilege? I don’t claim to know the answers with any certainty. If anything, the stories of Webb and Risen suggest that those questions yield different answers in different contexts.

I’ve been a working journalist for more than 25 years, across the demise of print and the rise of the Internet, and I’ve always viewed the idea of journalism as a profession as, at best, a double-edged sword.

Here are a few requirements you must pass to even be able to enter: you now must be 21 years of age (previously was 18), you’re required to sign a wavier, and you must be in excellent physical condition. Only two people go in at a time, and get this… it can last anywhere from 4 – 7 hours. They actually now only take four people through the haunted house each week.

They’re allowed to touch you, gag you, put a bag over your head and pretty much anything that’s not illegal. It’s also one of the few haunted houses that stays open year round, and the only haunted house in the world where admission is free….. I’m serious.

Imagine that someone close to you was in imminent danger and the only solution involved having police use torture to extract information from a suspect in custody. Would you agree or not?

While torture remains a divisive topic with many countries around the world authorizing its use, international human rights codes and the legal codes of most countries provide comprehensive legal protections against torture under any circumstances. Public opinion polls tend to be consistent in showing that only 34 percent of people worldwide actual endorse the use of torture though the numbers vary from country to country. Still, despite the consensus that torture is both immoral and ineffective, both as a means of punishment and as a way of gaining information, controversy still surrounds its use. Issues such as rendition, waterboarding, and the very definition of torture continue to influence international relations, especially given the current “War on Terror” that shows no sign of ending.

By my estimate, the majority of people who begin reading this are already of the opinion that philosophy is little more than a tedious form of mental masturbation, and worse, almost entirely useless. My response: I must sadly agree. On the other hand, I only concede under the assumption we are speaking about 98% of the philosophy you learn in school and that most supposed “philosophers” choose to focus on. Therefore, if you think philosophy sucks and has little bearing on anything real, I don’t blame you. However, do read on as I would like to explain how it has been hijacked over the last 50 years. In particular, the modern connotation of the word “philosophy” seems to largely exclude it’s most useful facet: ethical philosophy, or as I refer to it, personal philosophy.

Below is a brief history on the progression of my thought processes and how I came to give a shit about any of this:

I can remember back to when I first began to have thoughts of depth. My parents moved us out of state between fourth and fifth grade, so not only was I friendless, but also suddenly in the lowest grade at a brand new school. Before that, I had lots of friends and mindless social interactions, but unlike the elementary grades, middle school was full of cliques.

Debate about the merits of enhancement tends to be pretty binary. There are some — generally called bioconservatives — who are opposed to it; and others — transhumanists, libertarians and the like — who embrace it wholeheartedly. Is there any hope for an intermediate approach? One that doesn’t fall into the extremes of reactionary reject or uncritical endorsement?

Probably. Indeed, a careful reading of many pro- and anti-enhancement writers suggests that they are not, always and everywhere, in favour or against the use of enhancement. But to sustain the intermediate approach, we need some framework for deciding when enhancement is permissible and when it is not. In their paper, “Who Should Enhance? Conceptual and Normative Dimensions of Cognitive Enhancement”, Filippo Santoni di Sio, Philip Robichaud and Nicole Vincent try to provide one such framework.… Read the rest

Traditional contemporary animal rights issues are mostly founded on an assumption that we have solid definitions of what constitutes a “human” and what constitutes an “animal”. What if our definitions of these terms are called into question? What does the animal rights issue look like if we construct our ideas about humanity and animality in different ways? Are our lines dividing humanity and animality solidly drawn, or can they bleed and bend, perhaps be drawn in completely different ways?

Philosophy professor and author of Zoographies Matthew Calarco approaches animal rights from a standpoint of continental philosophy: if our definitions of what a “human” is and what an “animal” is are not firmly set, then our consideration of animal rights, if not all of ethics, can enter entirely different areas the current dialog excludes.

In ten years, how will the machines that run your daily existence respond when confronted with life-or-death decisions? Matthieu Cherubini at the Royal College of Art offers prototypes of Humanist, Protector, and Profit-Based moral parameters for self-driving cars:

Many car manufacturers are projecting that by 2025 most cars will operate on driveless systems. How can such systems be designed to accommodate the complicatedness of ethical and moral reasoning? Just like choosing the color of a car, ethics can become a commodified feature in autonomous vehicles that one can buy, change, and repurchase, depending on personal taste.
Three distinct algorithms have been created - each adhering to a specific ethical principle/behaviour set-up - and embedded into driverless virtual cars that are operating in a simulated environment, where they will be confronted with ethical dilemmas.

Nathaniel Rich writes for the New York Times Magazine that “bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad.”

The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his knees and remained in that position, speechless, for 20 minutes. He was 16. At 13, Novak vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. At 14, he saw a photograph of a passenger pigeon in an Audubon Society book and “fell in love.” But he didn’t know that the Science Museum of Minnesota, which he was then visiting with a summer program for North Dakotan high-school students, had them in their collection. He was shocked when he came across a cabinet containing two stuffed pigeons, a male and a female, mounted in lifelike poses. He was overcome by awe, sadness and the birds’ physical beauty: their bright auburn breasts, slate-gray backs and the dusting of iridescence around their napes that, depending on the light and angle, appeared purple, fuchsia or green.